's BANK.

The traveller who undertakes an extensive journey, cannot chuse his
road, or his weather: sometimes the prospect brightens, with a serene
sky, a smooth path, and a smiling sun; all within and without him
is chearful.

Anon he is assailed by the tempests, stumbles over the ridges, is
bemired in the hollows, the sun hides his face, and his own is
sorrowful--this is the lot of the historian; he has no choice of
subject, merry or mournful, he must submit to the changes which offer;
delighted with the prosperous tale, depressed with the gloomy.

I am told, this work has often drawn a smile from the reader; it has
often drawn a sigh from me. A celebrated painter fell in love with the
picture he drew; I have wept at mine--Such is the chapter of the Lords,
and the Workhouse. We are not always proof against a melancholy or a
tender sentiment.

Having pursued our several stages, with various fortune, through fifty
chapters, at the close of this last tragic scene, emotion and the
journey cease together.

Upon King's-wood, five miles from Birmingham, and two hundred yards east
of the Alcester-road, runs a bank for near a mile in length, unless
obliterated by the new inclosure; for I saw it complete in 1775. This
was raised by the famous Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, about 1324, to
inclose a wood, from whence the place derives its name.

Then that feeble monarch, Edward the Second, governed the kingdom; the
amorous Isabella, his wife, governed the king, and the gallant Mortimer
governed the queen.

The parishes of King's-norton, Solihull, Yardley, uniting in this wood,
and enjoying a right of commons, the inhabitants conceived themselves
injured by the inclosure, assembled in a body, threw down the fence, and
murdered the Earl's bailiff.

Mortimer, in revenge, procured a special writ from the Court of Common
Pleas, and caused the matter to be tried at Bromsgrove, where the
affrighted inhabitants, over-awed with power, durst not appear in their
own vindication. The Earl, therefore, recovered a verdict, and the
enormous sum of 300_l_. damage. A sum nearly equal, at that time, to the
fee-simple of the three parishes.

The confusion of the times, and the poverty of the people, protracted
payment, till the unhappy Mortimer, overpowered by his enemies, was
seized as a criminal in Nottingham-castle; and, without being heard,
executed at Tyburn, in 1328.

The distressed inhabitants of our three parishes humbly petiti